Evernote can detect and identify both printed and handwritten text within PDFs. However, if you're using a multifunction printer to scan documents to PDF and the scanned PDFs aren't appearing in your search results, it's possible that the PDF contains hidden text added during scanning, which prevents it from being properly indexed. This issue may arise due to settings related to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or embedded metadata.
To quickly check for hidden text, follow these steps below:
- Open the PDF.
- Select the text.
- Copy and paste it into a text editor
If the pasted content appears garbled or unreadable, this suggests that the PDF contains invisible text. In this case, both the visible text and handwritten content in the PDF will not be searchable.
To avoid the addition of hidden text
Please ensure the following settings are configured on your scanner
- Disable OCR or Text Recognition in Printer Settings
OCR can add invisible text to a scanned document, even if the visible content is just an image of text. Disabling OCR will ensure that no hidden text layers are added. - Check PDF Settings
Ensure that the scan-to-PDF settings are configured correctly.
Scan Type: Choose “Color” or “Grayscale” instead of “Text” or “Mixed”. Text-based scans are more likely to include invisible OCR text.
File Type: Select “PDF (Image Only)” or a similar option. This ensures the PDF will contain only the scanned image of the document, without additional text or metadata layers.
Updated